


Evil Spirits

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Costumes, Family, Friendship, Fun, Gen, Jack o'Lanterns, Knight and Squire - Freeform, all hallow's eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 10:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12679620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: All Hallow's Eve in Legann means pumpkin carving and costumes.





	Evil Spirits

Evil Spirits

“Idle hands make the evil spirits’ work.” Lord Imrah’s eyes twinkled like stars at Roald and Alan over his breakfast tart—eggs, spinach, onions, and cheese in a flaky crust, a delectable dish Roald had never sampled before living in the south with his knightmaster but was developing a taste for—as the three of them sat around his dining room table on a brisk All Hallow’s Eve morning. “We must find work for you two boys before you get into trouble.” 

Alan, who did not seem to enjoy being awake any time before noon, scowled down at his plate with an expression reminiscent of his mother’s before one of her famed explosions. Toying with his mostly uneaten food with his fork, Alan mumbled, “We could always go back to sleep. We never get into trouble in our sleep, sir.” 

“If you had your way, you’d sleep until the party.” Lord Imrah chuckled, referring to the gathering he and his wife, Lady Marielle, were hosting that evening for some of the wealthier merchants of Legann and their families. “Unfortunately for you, lad, there’s a lot of preparation to be done, and my lady expects us all to pitch in.” 

“How can Alan and I help, my lord?” Roald asked, savoring the final bite of his breakfast pie. He had heard the vivacious Lady Marielle in the kitchen talking excitedly about the night’s menu with the chefs when he passed en route to the dining room, and he had seen Lord Imrah’s daughters, Julienne and Mathilde, festooning the pillars in the ballroom with orange and black ribbons. 

“Nothing too onerous, I assure you, Roald.” Lord Imrah smiled as he pushed away his plate, having finished his breakfast. “In the courtyard there are pumpkins that need carving. You two will carve them into jack o’lanterns and place them in the entrance hall to give a ghoulish greeting to our guests.” 

“We’re going to make jack o’lanterns?” Suddenly, Alan sounded awake and excited. 

“Yes, but only in the courtyard.” Lord Imrah wagged a genially warning finger. “If you lads drop pieces of chopped pumpkins all over my entrance hall, you’ll be the ones mopping it before the party, I promise you. Now run along. There are pumpkins screaming to be carved.” 

As he and Alan left the dining room, Roald wondered if he was the only squire in the realm assigned to carve jack o’lanterns on All Hallow’s Eve. Probably. Sometimes his knight master was too kindly. Part of him wanted to protest that at fifteen he was too old to partake in such a childish pleasure, but the rest of him was eager to carve pumpkins, something he hadn’t done in years. 

Crisp air nipped their cheeks as they stepped into the courtyard littered with fallen leaves. A pile of pumpkins sat on a bench under a beech tree. As he pulled a knife (a fine Raven Armory blade his godsfather Gary had gotten him before he began page training) from his breeches and grabbed a pumpkin to carve, Roald nudged Alan, pointing out playfully, “Maybe you had the right idea training with Lord Imrah, Alan. We never got to make jack o’lanterns when I was a page.” 

“Four years without making jack o’lanterns?” Alan’s hazel eyes widened in horror as he cut a jagged opening in the top of his pumpkin, removing the stem. “That stinks like a swamp.” 

“At the time, I barely noticed.” Roald shrugged as he sliced off the stem of his own pumpkin, because All Hallow’s Eve was a more important holiday in the south probably because it provided an excuse for southerners to display their traditional hospitality, since in the south, Roald was learning, any reason to hold a party was embraced. “All Hallow’s Eve isn’t celebrated as much in the north as it is in the south.” 

“The northerners are missing out on their best chance to be anything they want in life by throwing on an All Hallow’s Eve costume.” Alan stuck out his tongue as he reached his hands inside his pumpkin to scoop out the innards, dumping them into a pewter bowl that had been left because the pumpkins so that the cooks could roast the seeds for serving as an appetizer that evening. “Yuck. This feels like an ogre’s guts.” 

“How many ogre guts have you touched exactly?” Roald teased even though he couldn’t prevent his nose from wrinkling at the squelching sensation he felt between his hands as he transferred his pumpkin’s seeds and flesh into the bowl. 

“None.” Alan’s dagger swept across his pumpkin, chopping out a pair of jeering eyes. “I can imagine what ogre guts feel like, though.” 

“Spoken like a true expert.” Roald grinned as he gave his pumpkin neat, triangular eyes. 

“My pumpkin looks like an ogre.” Alan was giving his pumpkin a twisted slit of a nose and a leering, saber-toothed mouth. “That proves I am an expert.” Glancing at the smiling face on Roald’s pumpkin, Alan added, “Yours isn’t scary enough, Roald. We should have a competition to see who can carve the most terrifying jack o’lantern.” 

“You’re on, Alan.” Roald grabbed another pumpkin and determinedly set about transforming it into a monster. “Just don’t blame me if you get nightmares tonight.” 

They carved every conceivable horror—ogres, Stormwings, ghosts, and hurrocks—into their pumpkins and as they decked the entrance hall with their foul creations, Roald almost believed that the jack o’lanterns would do their job of scaring away any restless spirits of the dead that might come calling. Instead of placing lit candles that would burn out into the pumpkins, Roald and Alan used their Gifts to illuminate their jack o’lanterns with globes of light—sky blue for Roald and snake green for Alan—that would blaze without fuel for hours. 

“Your green Gift makes your jack o’lanterns seem eerier.” Roald nodded at the emerald glow emanating from Alan’s pumpkins. 

“Let’s go find a judge for our contest.” Alan was smirking rather like a jack o’lantern, clearly confident that his victory was assured. 

“You’ve found one.” Lord Imrah’s voice echoed across the entrance hall as he descended a marble staircase that led up to the castle’s living quarters. Jerking his chin at the jack o’lanterns standing sentry throughout his entrance hall, he commented wryly, “Well done, boys. You’ve turned my castle into a house of horrors.” 

“As you commanded, my lord.” Roald bowed. 

“Will you judge which jack o’lantern is the best, sir?” piped Alan, exuberant as a puppy begging for a pat on the head. 

“Of course, Alan.” Lord Imrah scrutinized the array of pumpkins before jabbing a finger at one of Alan’s ogres. “That one is the most terrifying, so I give it the victory.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Alan’s face radiated mischief. “I modeled him on you.”

“Such impudence will not go unpunished.” Lord Imrah’s words were stern but his eyes were laughing. “I change my mind and give victory to Roald for not calling me an ogre.” 

“It’s not a manners contest.” Alan pouted. “He shouldn’t win just for being polite, my lord.” 

“When you’re a knight, everything is a manners contest.” Lord Imrah clapped Alan on the back and then switched the subject. “Are you lads done with your costumes for tonight?” 

“Almost done, sir,” Alan replied. “Just a few finishing touches and mine will be ready.” 

“Mine’s not quite ready, my lord,” answered Roald, noting inwardly that a more accurate description of his costume was that he hadn’t started making it yet. 

“You’d better go finish them then.” Lord Imrah waved a hand in dismissal. “Off you trot.” 

Roald and Alan bowed and then disappeared in their separate directions, Alan darting upstairs to presumably complete his costume in his bedroom, and Roald hurrying toward the laundry. Figuring that a ghost would be an acceptable if cliche All Hallow’s Eve costume, Roald convinced a washerwoman to give him an old white sheet. 

He had just returned to his chamber, a comfortable and cozy room with windows that overlooked the ocean, and was cutting slits in the sheet so he could see out of it when it was draped over him when a knock sounded on his door. 

“You may enter,” he shouted, too busy with his costume to bother rising to open the door. 

“What do you think, Roald?” Alan, arrow shafts stuck into his clothes and tied into his hair, twirled in the threshold so that Roald could admire his attire. 

“Very macabre.” Roald chuckled at the sight Alan presented in his doorway. “What in the name of Mithros are you supposed to be?” 

“I’m a wounded warrior.” Alan arched an eyebrow at the sheet Roald was mangling. “Please tell me that you’re not just going to be a ghost.” 

“All right,” responded Roald because he was nothing if not agreeable. “I’m not just going to be a ghost.” 

“Then what are you being?” Without asking for permission, which Roald would have granted, Alan sank into Roald’s desk chair. 

“The ghost of the Prince in the Tower.” Inventing this idea as he spoke, Roald was grateful for Sir Myles’ history lessons. 

“The one who was taken hostage and strangled in his sleep before his coronation?” Alan’s forehead furrowed. 

“Of course I mean that one.” Roald resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “What other Prince in the Tower could I possibly be referring to, Alan?” 

Ignoring Roald’s question in favor of one of his own, Alan demanded, “Doesn’t it strike you as a bit morbid to be the ghost of one of your ancestors that died in a horrific fashion?” 

“It was almost two hundred years ago that he died, and it was during the middle of a brutal civil war.” Roald shrugged. Maybe he would have felt differently if the prince’s name had been remembered, but it was forgotten, as was the name of the family that had killed him—wiped out by the Contes in retribution for their lost heir—and the castle where he had been murdered in his sleep, which had been reduced from a mighty fortress to rubble. The story didn’t have any more hold over him than any other horror story in history although it did serve as a powerful reminder to him of how passionate, proud, and determined to right wrongs his family could be. Fire burned through Conte veins when crossed. 

“You’ll need blood on your sheet if you want to be a credible Prince in the Tower.” Alan seemed to have accepted Roald’s costume and decided to focus on ways to make it less conventional, which Roald appreciated. “I could use some blood for my costume, too.” Before Roald could reply, a crafty cast fell over Alan’s face and he dashed out of the room, tossing over his shoulder, “I know just what to use. I’ll be back in a moment, and if I’m not, just wait longer.” 

Suddenly seeing the Baron of Pirate Swoop in Alan, Roald shook his head and waited for Alan’s return, wondering what trouble Alan was stirring up now. He wasn’t kept in suspense for long, because Alan reappeared in his room within minutes, clutching a tube of red lipstick as if it were a treasure. 

“Lipstick can be blood,” Alan explained, panting, as he dumped the lipstick onto Roald’s sheet. 

Realizing that Alan had a point, Roald picked up the lipstick and smeared it across the linen, creating crimson streaks too red to be shed blood (since Roald had seen enough blood shed in battle and at executions to understand that blood was rust-colored when spilled). 

He had just finished marring the sheet and was passing the lipstick along to Alan so that Alan could add gore to his costume when he heard Lady Marielle stalking down the corridor and hammering like a siege ram on the doors to her daughters’ bedchambers, shouting, “Julienne and Mathilde, if I catch either of you wearing my missing lipstick tonight, you’ll be doing mending projects until the end of the century!” 

Wincing as he remembered that the seven-year-old Julienne and the nine-year-old Mathilde were forbidden by their formidable mother from wearing makeup of any kind and as he imagined Lady Marielle’s reaction to learning that her husband’s wards had pilfered her lipstick for their costumes, Roald hissed, “Why did you have to steal Lady Marielle’s lipstick, Alan? You’ll get us both up to our ears in trouble and maybe Julienne and Mathilde as well.” 

“I didn’t steal,” protested Alan, flushing to the roots of his copper-gold hair as they heard Lady Marielle storm past Roald’s door on the way to her solar. “I just borrowed without permission.”

“Borrowing without permission is stealing.” This time Roald surrendered to the urge to roll his eyes. Biting his lip as he considered whether it would wiser to brave Lady Marielle’s ire by immediately confessing their crime or waiting until her temper might have cooled to reveal their theft, Roald muttered, “Should we return what’s left of the lipstick right now?” 

“No.” Alan blanched but his head shake was fervent. “Not unless we want to meet the Black God tonight. Ma taught me that if there’s a woman on the warpath about the only way to survive is to duck.” 

Roald had to concede the merit of this survival strategy, but it was with some trepidation that he and Alan went down to the entrance hall that evening, and it was a relief when Lady Marielle—majestic in a toga reminiscent of those Sir Myles said the Old Ones had worn—threw back her head, and, between peals of laughter, remarked, “Now I see where my lipstick ran off too, boys.” 

“I beg your pardon, my lady.” Roald bowed his head in apology. “We’ll buy you a replacement, I promise.” 

“Don’t worry yourself about it.” Lady Marielle tapped his wrist in assurance. “Consider it an All Hallow’s Eve gift from my husband and me, Your Highness.” 

Before Roald could thank her for her generosity, he was distracted by Lord Imrah’s appearance at his elbow. 

“With the whole wide world of costumes before you, you choose to be a ghost, squire,” chided Lord Imrah. “Your lack of creativity disappoints me.” 

“I’m not just any ghost. I’m the ghost of the Prince in the Tower,” Roald chirped, innocent as a robin. “Is that creative enough to please you, my lord?” 

“The prince who was strangled in his sleep by his knightmaster?” Lord Imrah frowned, and Roald had to hide a grimace as he recalled that Lord Imrah was right. The Prince in the Tower had been taken hostage and strangled while he slept by his own knightmaster, and it had been this crime in addition to the desire to have the king groom the heir for rule that had led to the Conte custom of the Crown Prince squiring for the king. His costume could definitely be perceived as more offensive and controversial than he had intended, which he supposed was fate’s punishment for not working on his costume before All Hallow’s Eve. 

Deciding to plant his foot more deeply in his mouth or his tongue more firmly in his cheek—depending on how Lord Imrah chose to perceive his behavior—Roald tried a joke. “My lord, every knightmaster wants to strangle his squire, so you have to admire his execution.” 

“You’re incorrigible, Roald.” Lord Imrah chuckled, and Roald relaxed, relieved that he hadn’t hurt his kindly knightmaster with his careless costume. “The evil spirits must have gotten into you tonight.”


End file.
